Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys in Power Rangers-style helmet and high-viz jacket at Live At York Museum Gardens on Saturday. Picture: Devon Chambers
REASONS to be cheerful, one, two, three, as the summer sounds of the city changed from John Smith’s race day on Knavesmire to Live At York Museum Gardens and onwards to the pubs of York once Saturday night turned into Sunday morning’s Hey Jude.
Kick-off time for day three of Live At York Museum Gardens had been moved forward by 30 minutes to accommodate England’s 10pm quarter-final clash with Leeds-born Erling Harland’s Norway.
They may be Dai-hard Welshmen, but headliners Super Furry Animals didn’t share the attitude of set-closing anthem The Man Don’t Give A **** in switching their exit time to 9.55pm, rather than 10.30pm.
Saturday’s bill boasted five acts, one more than for Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Self Esteem’s equally diverse evening line-ups on Thursday and Friday. Three bands from the Land of Song, the Super Furries, fellow seasoned Cardiff combo Los Campesinos! and Pys Melyn, from Pen Llŷn, North Wales, were joined by Nottingham’s Divorce and Buckinghamshire/West London-raised Baxter Dury.
Pys Melyn opening Saturday’s bill at Live At York Museum Gardens. Picture: Devon Chambers
Wistful, harmonious, hazy indie psych-pop five-piece Pys Melyn, whose name translates as ‘Yellow Peas’, took to the stage at 3.55pm, when the day’s temperatures were at their height: weather to turn stressed-out pea pods from green to yellow as the chlorophyll breaks down, as botany boffins would know.
Your reviewer arrived midway through Divorce’s set of confessional indie-folk rock and alt-country songs reminiscent of Mojave 3 and The Broken Family Band, drawn to the fiddle-playing as much as to the double-barrelled duo of bassist Tiger Cohen-Towell and Felix Mackenzie-Barrow alternating lead vocals.
Divorce, by the way, have been living up to their name. On May 12, it was announced that fellow founder members Adam Peter-Smith and Kasper Sandstrom would be leaving the band to “prioritise their personal lives”. Two months later, Saturday’s line-up, showcasing 2025’s debut album Drive To Goldenhammer, looked and sounded happily settled into its new groove.
“Enjoy the rest of the day. Keep drinking water,” advised Mackenzie-Barrow. Messages on the screens to either side of the stage urged the same action: Stay Hydrated, it counselled, highlighting the availability of free water points for re-filling and also of free sun cream in the First Aid tent.
Divorce’s Tiger Cohen-Towell at Live At York Museum Gardens. Picture: Devon Chambers
Such was the roving medical staff’s concern for care in the broiling heat that the sight of your reviewer sitting head bowed, writing notes on a ledge by the Yorkshire Museum walls, attracted the attention of two medics. “Are you OK,” they asked. It spoke volumes of everything about Futuresound and York Museum Trust’s event management being spot-on.
The crowd was yet to peak: the perfect time to take a walk around the site, with its bars and food vendors, First Aid and Wellbeing facilities, multitude of posters for upcoming Futuresound promotions and merchandise stall, offering all manner of Super Furry Animals T-shirts and a lonely brag in the corner, I’m The Sausage Man (which would later form a sizzling high in Baxter Dury’s set).
“Welcome to the rock concert,” announced Los Campesinos! lead singer Gareth David Paisley, drawing attention back to the stage. Billed as “the UK’s first and only emo band”, they specialise in “sleeper hits for weeping dips**ts since 2001”; sleeper hits” in truth that did not awaken memorable hooks on contact with the York air.
Los Campesinos! frontman Gareth David Paisey looks to the skies in his Music Is A Natural High T-shirt at Live At York Museum Gardens. Picture: Devon Chambers
Still favouring emo black attire, albeit in T-shirt and shorts form, they were hard working, earnest, political too in “standing up against the creeping fascism we see around as every day” and Freedom For Palestine banner.
The “Heart Swells” message on their stage backdrop was as much an invocation as the name of their record label, but the songs tended to be laborious, typified by 2008’s We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed failing to match the epic promise of its none-more-emo title.
“This is a rare away gig for us,” said Paisley, to the somewhat isolated cheers of Los Campesinos! aficionados, determined to make their presence heard on their big day out, like a non-league club playing at a Premier League big six ground in the FA Cup third round.
Baxter Dury was in the mood to crack on, his three-piece band taking to the stage two minutes early, to be joined by the front man in yellow shirt and dark suit, strutting like a bull-baiting toreador. Behind him, keyboard player and vocalist Madelaine Hart did much of the melodic heavy-lifting, contrasting with his braggadocio spoken-word outbursts, as he hit you with his rhythm schtick.
Baxter Dury striking a pose in his humorously provocative set at Live At York Museum Gardens. Picture: Devon Chambers
Part-toaster, part-rapper, part jousting court jester, full of jabs and gibes, he was an agent provocateur, like Mark E Smith leading The Fall, or Keith Allen fronting Fat Les’s 1998 World Cup football anthem Vindaloo.
No room for between-song niceties, he built momentum the more his coruscating songs leered and jeered, from Return Of The Sharp Heads, through Allbamone, to the stand-out Baxter (these are my friends). Changing a lyric from “Hotel In Brixton” to “Hotel In York” was a typically sharp touch too.
Super Furry Animals had never played York in 33 years together, but on this year’s return to the concert platform after a ten-year hiatus, what better setting could there be to revive Hello Sunshine (Come Into My Life) than in the botanical York Museum Gardens.
The day’s sunshine had mellowed by the time the Cardiff art-rockers opened with the embracing hug of (Drawing) Rings Around The World at 8.25pm, but their songs are marked as much by an orb of warmth as occasional weird edges, the musical style duly altering as often as frontman Gruff Rhys changed guitars.
Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys chewing celery in Receptacle For the Respectable at Live At York Museum Gardens. Picture: Devon Chambers
As with OMD’s set on Thursday, fast-moving video projections accompanied each number, mixing with live footage of Gruff in shades and peaked cap and linear stage lighting in colours to complement each song’s mood and the imagery on screen.
This was an exemplary outdoor gig, stuffed with SFA highs such as Juxtaposed With U, Northern Lites and God! Show Me Magic, and the Welsh-language wonder of Ymaelodi â’r Ymylon.
Then add the humorously quirky visual flourishes, as impactful as in David Byrne’s shows, such as Rhys’s sign board switching from Applause to Louder And Ape Sh*t! or suddenly sporting a high-viz jacket and Power Rangers-style helmet or chewing on a celery in Receptacle For the Respectable in an homage to Paul McCartney’s “vegetable percussion on The Beach Boys’ 1967 curio Vegetables.
How else could they finish than with the magnificent mayhem of The Man Don’t Give A ***, climaxing with a fantastical return to the stage in long-haired furry animal costumes. Something spectacularly blissful for 4 the weekend indeed.
The Man Don’t Give A **** finale to Super Furry Animals’s set at York Museum Gardens, ending at 9.53pm, well in time for England v Norway’s kick-off. Picture: Devon Chambers